New plan to shut out cartels at Lands offices

• Permanent secretary Dorothy Angote says an automation project that will tame powerful, well connected operatives will be ready by May.

The ongoing automation is key to her success, she points out.

Perhaps, nobody understands these cartels’ operations better than the lands commissioner, Mr Zablon Agwata Mabea.

He describes them as “dangerous”, citing the “amounts of money” involved and the “profiles of the people” behind them.

“If you become a stumbling block to their “deal”, they could easily come for your neck,” the commissioner says.

Manual system

But he, like his PS, is convinced that an automated system will lock them out, as there will be transparency which, he explains, is lacking in the current manual system. A little progress has, however, been made to slow down the cartels’ operations.

For instance, when the commissioner realised that most of the fake title deeds used to come through the City Council, he barred (council) officers from the registry, where files are kept.

“I have since issued a directive to our officers not to allow City Hall representatives access to the registry,” the PS says.

“They used to come with the fake documents and insert them into our files.”

Ms Angote says she could guess the cartels’ “network and might” only when an MP asked her to transfer a “corrupt” clerk in the Lands ministry, but that the clerk should not know where the directive came from.

“If an MP can be scared of a mere clerk, it can only show how powerful and scaring the cartel network is,” the PS says.